


Coffee Grounds

by Hedge_witch



Series: Ankh Morpok hipsters [1]
Category: Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3992290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/pseuds/Hedge_witch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a crashing sense of inevitability, here is a Coffee Shop AU. The rougher parts of Ankh Morpok are being gentrified (much to Vimes' disgust) and Igorina and Mal have set up a coffee-house in the Shades. All would be well, if Mal could jettison her embarrassing crush on the girl who works in the bar next door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee Grounds

‘Sergeant,’ Vimes growled, ‘what the hell is happening to the Shades?’ 

Sergeant Angua glanced over the the street to see where the Commander was directing his glare, wincing as she saw what had drawn his attention. ‘Ah yes sir, that premises has recently changed hands.’

‘It was a perfectly good tavern,’ Vimes said, ‘the sort where they’d put a shiv in your ribs as soon as serve you a drink, and now it’s...Shade’s Bikes?’ 

‘I believe Mr Drumknott is a frequent patron,’ Angua continued, watching an expression of horrified incredulity sweep over her boss’s face with a certain fascination, ‘apparently he’ll trust no-one else with his bicycle.’ 

‘Drumknott?’ Vimes exclaimed, ‘here?’ He glanced down the street with the air of a man who has returned home after a long day to find all of his possessions moved precisely one inch to the left, searching for some anchor to normality. ‘Jackrum’s Bar,’ he muttered, ‘that doesn’t look so bad, but,’ he narrowed his eyes, ‘that dwarf is drinking something pink and fruity from a jam-jar,’ he hurriedly averted his eyes, glancing at the coffee-house next door. ‘Fangs for the Coffee!’ he cried, ‘Sergeant! What is happening to this city!’ 

‘I’m afraid it’s been spreading into the Shades for about a year now sir,’ Angua said carefully, ‘quite a few of the arrivals from Uberwald and Borogrovia have set up coffee-houses, the odd bakery and err, restaurants where they don’t serve meat. Some of the students from the University and the Guilds have also been moving in, apparently they like the ‘atmosphere’ in the neighbourhood.... They call them hipsters.’ She glanced at Vimes’ despairing face. ‘Sorry sir.’ 

‘Hipsters...’ Vimes said, rolling the word around in his mouth as though it were one of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s sausages. ‘That bastard Patrician has something to do with this I’ll be bound.’ He turned away, ‘come on Angua, before I arrest that man for sporting an illegal mustache.’ 

***

 

As the Commander of the Watch stormed off to patrol reassuringly un-gentrified streets, Igorina, the co-owner of Ankh-Morpok’s first bean-to-cup coffee house, kicked her business partner in the ribs. ‘Get up, they’re on their way.’ 

Maladict unrolled herself elegantly from beneath the counter. Despite appearances, she was not concealing herself from the gimlet eye of the law, but was instead performing her usual calming ritual of inhaling the scent of the discarded coffee grounds. This practice was one she had developed recently in order to deal with the daily appearance of the two particular customers who were currently walking through the door. 

They did not, at first glance, resemble the sort of people that would make a vampire cower behind their coffee machine. They were obviously siblings, both blonde and almost of a height, the brother had a gentle air and paint stains on his knuckles, the sister had watchful eyes and bruises on hers. 

Mal dragged her eyes away from the line of the girl’s shoulders and quickly downed another espresso. 

‘Hello Paul! Alright Pol?’ Shufti, seven months pregnant and still frantically busy supplying half the coffee-houses in Morpok with brownies and muffins to suit every dietary requirement, came bustling out of the kitchen to hug the brother and sister. 

‘I’m fine, ta, Shufti,’ Polly said. ‘Paul wanted to come in and sketch, so I thought I’d pop next door and sort out the order of Genuan rum that should be coming in this morning. Ever since those witches from Lancre came in there’s been a craze for banana daiquiris so we had to order extra.’ 

‘Oh god that sounds like heaven,’ Shufti said, eyeing her stomach with distinct impatience. 

Polly grinned, ‘I’ll fix you one sans rum if you come by tonight, on the house, because even Jackarum’s not totally immune to pity.’ 

Shufti punched her lightly on the arm and handed her a paper bag filled with carrot cake. ‘We’ll all come by later on,’ she said, gesturing to Igorina and Mal, ignoring the latter’s furious glare. 

‘Great,’ Polly said, hugging Shufti goodbye and waving to her brother, who had installed himself, along with his sketchbook, in the cafe window before turning smartly on her heel, her old Borogrovian Army greatcoat flying behind her as she strode out of the door. 

‘You can breathe now Mal,’ Shufti said mischievously as the door closed behind her. 

Mal muttered something obscene about her parentage through a mouthful of coffee and walnut cake. 

Igorina grinned, ‘if you want to take a half-day to work on your outfit Mal, I will understand.’ 

Mal glowered, ‘may I remind you two that I am a scion of ancient darkness who is restrained only by the merest thread of willpower from feeding upon your lifeblood?’ 

‘The thought would trouble me more if you didn’t have coffee icing all over your top lip Mal,’ Shufti grinned as she donned her bike helmet, ready for her next delivery. ‘I’ll see you two later,’ she said, leaving with a wave for Igorina and a wink for Mal. 

Mal applied a little more force than was strictly necessary to the coffee grinder and wondered when she had become the laughing stock of Ankh-Morpok. 

***  
Jackrum’s bar had moved with the times. Obviously, he had also taken care to drag his established regulars along with it, creating the sort of place where you could get the traditional tipple of a pint of Morpokian bitter with a shot of neat gin, a Genuan sunrise and everything in between. 

Polly, arriving with a letter from her father to his old comrade, had been scrutinised closely by the old campaigner, who had noted the calluses on her hands and the ill-concealed sword at her side and had promptly shoved a cocktail shaker into her hands. He had added ‘see if you can get any use out of this damn thing,’ and Polly had spent the next day frantically reading up on how to construct any drink more complex than a glass full of scumble. 

However, she had learned fast, and, as she span the shaker from hand to hand, preparing three raspberry margaritas for a party of dwarves, she felt confident that she could call herself pretty adept at this point. 

Her hands absolutely did not stumble when the girls from the cafe next door walked in. 

‘Tonker,’ Polly said, as she garnished the glasses with mint leaves and poured the drinks, ‘would you mind pulling a few pints for the Watch over there? I promised a friend I’d make something special.’ 

‘Sure,’ Tonker said, ‘it’s too early to go out front and intimidate people anyway. What are you making?’ 

‘Banana daiquiri,’ Polly replied, ‘want one?’ 

Tonker looked sceptical, ‘I’ll stick with beer thanks.’ She wandered up the bar, nodding hello to Shufti. 

‘God I need my sadly non-alcoholic drink,’ Shufti complained, ‘I had to deliver to the University this afternoon, I think they wanted to use my cupcakes for experiments.’ 

‘Their loss,’ Polly said, ‘hi Igorina, I like the new stitching.’ 

‘Cheers,’ Igorina said, glancing down at her collarbone, ‘I wanted to go for a bit of a retro look, with the cross-stitch pattern. Can I have Shufti’s share of rum in mine as an extra?’ 

‘Sure,’ Polly said, glancing finally over at the vampire, who was lounging causally on the bar, her hair artfully tousled and her skin eerily pale, even in the dim light of the bar, ‘hi Mal.’ She felt herself stuttering and, annoyed, continued with unnecessary force, ‘what would you like?’ 

‘Oh!’ Mal looked up artlessly, a small smile playing about her mouth, ‘I’m afraid I don’t drink...wine,’ she grinned at Shufti and Igorina’s groans. 

‘Right,’ Polly said dryly, ‘do you happen to drink...espresso martinis?’ 

Mal’s eyes lit up with unholy glee, ‘I most certainly do.’ 

Igorina rolled her eyes and Shufti snickered, but they watched in appreciative silence as Polly worked her magic, seizing the glasses from her hands and sipping their drinks appreciatively. Only Shufti could not help but give a small sigh of disappointment at the absence of rum in hers. 

Mal hummed with satisfaction and crunched one of the coffee beans used as garnish between her teeth, ‘This is very good Polly, I wasn’t aware mixology was so widely practiced in Borogrovia.’ 

Polly laughed, ‘that’s because it isn’t. I’m not sure anyone there is aware of anything more advanced than black beer and neat vodka, and if they were I don’t think it would be long before it ended up as an Abomination… Hold on a sec,’ she continued, glancing over the crowd waiting at the bar and addressing a small man who had been pushed to the edge. ‘Yeah, you, the one who just got elbowed out of the way, what do you want to drink?’ She eyeballed the Guild students who had been rather too free with their elbows while making their way to the bar while she listened to the rather nervous clerk’s order. ‘Two Mojitos, coming up, does your dwarf-friend want gravel on the glass?’ 

‘But you’ve worked in a bar before,’ Mal said, watching the disgruntled students with some amusement. 

‘Yeah,’ Polly replied, chopping limes, ‘my dad ran an inn back home, nothing like this, but I learned a few tricks.’ She smiled and patted something Mal imagined was probably an offensive weapon of some sort beneath the bar, then went back to mixing the drinks, shaking the hair that fell into her eyes out of the way impatiently. 

Mal restrained herself from reaching out and pushing her hair out of the way for her and stared pensively into her (now empty) glass. She was going to need a few more of these. 

***

There was something blurry in Mal’s field of vision, and behind it a terrible white light. She closed her eyes to shut it out and turned her head aside. She could smell the wonderful scent of coffee coming from somewhere, just out of reach. It might be worth opening her eyes again, just for a second, to work out where it was coming from. 

She did, and hissing, shut them immediately. 

‘Ah you’re awake,’ Igorina said in her unnecessarily loud voice, ‘Sit up and I’ll give you this cup, if you try to drink it lying down you’ll choke.’ 

With extreme reluctance Mal hauled herself upright, groping blindly for the proffered coffee cup and draining its contents in one gulp. 

‘Do you remember what happened?’ Igorina said, with slightly ghoulish curiosity. 

‘Of course I do,’ Mal snapped, ‘vampires don’t get drunk, it’s considered uncouth.’

Igorina gave a sceptical smile. ‘However, if their preferred poison is coffee, they can get really really wired. You started counting out all the coffee beans again when we got back, and moaning about your ridiculous crush on Polly.’ She frowned, ‘I don’t understand why you don’t just ask her to accompany you to a ball or a den of vice or whatever it is you undead aristocrats do.’ 

‘I can’t just ask her to do anything like that!’ Mal hissed, ‘I don’t know how!’

Igorina’s frown grew so pronounced that she winced and tugged at the stitches along her forehead, ‘but surely you have..?’ 

‘No!’ Mal complained, ‘I never had to! It was simpler…before, all I had to do was hover outside their window for a bit, engineer a coach-crash so that they’d give me shelter in their castle…Simple things! But I think that sort of thing is frowned upon now,’ she said, tugging on the black ribbon attached to her lapel, ‘and they wouldn’t work on Polly anyway.’ 

‘Can you imagine?’ Igorina snorted, ‘she’d probably fix the carriage herself, or stab you…’ 

‘Well I’m glad you find this all so amusing,’ Mal said bitterly, ‘I’m going to pine away due to unrequited desire at this rate.’ 

‘They can quit the blood but never the melodrama,’ Igor muttered, ‘come on, have another cappuccino, it’ll make you feel better.’ 

***

It was a coincidence (though not much of one, for anyone with a passing familiarity with vampiric bloodlines) that the chair of the Ankh Morpok branch of the League of Temperance was a distant cousin of Maladict’s. After having gone cold-bat she had devoted herself fanatically to her extensive social life, with the result that the Black Ribboners of Ankh Morpok rarely went a week without being roped into some kind of event. This time it was the annual Black Ribbon Support Network Summer Fete and Mal and Igorina had been informed in no uncertain terms that they were required to provide refreshments. 

Igorina was rather happy about this state of affairs, as it gave her the opportunity to wheel out her pride and joy. She had spent a whole winter converting the old carriage into a mobile coffee stand of such wild inventiveness that it drew crowds while merely being wheeled through the streets (the denizens of Ankh Morpok were particularly enthusiastic about the possibility of explosions). She hummed happily as she carefully set it up, brushing stray flecks of dust from the paintwork and adjusting the system of blenders that, she was certain, would provide them with a steady flow of crushed ice. 

‘Oh it’s Otto!’ Maladict explained, wincing as her picture was enthusiastically taken before Otto von Chriek bounded over to greet them, sweeping his cumbersome cloak over his shoulder. 

‘Maladict! Igorina! I am very glad to see you.’ He said, shaking their hands vigorously. 

‘Are you here for the Times?’ Mal enquired, dodging another camera flash. 

‘And as a League member yes,’ Otto replied, ‘I also came along to find some subjects for my little experiment...’ 

‘Oh yes?’ Igorina said, her ears pricking up. 

‘Yes, I am working with a friend on some more artistic projects, seeing how to combine our work in order to represent the excitement of the urban environment.’ Otto glanced over his shoulder, ‘Ah! here he comes now. Hello Paul!’

‘Oh crap,’ Mal muttered under her breath as Paul came bounding up, weilding a sketchbook and grinning at Otto. Behind him, inevitably, walked his sister Polly who was regarding them all with some amusement. She had rolled the sleeves of her shirt up the the elbow and Mal could see a smattering of freckles on her strong forearms. She swallowed audibly. 

‘You have centuries under your belt Maladict,’ Igorina muttered, ‘say something or I swear the next time we get promising weather I will strap you to a table and leave you out for the lightning.’ 

‘Yes alright!’ Mal took a deep breath above the coffee grounds, ‘I’ll dredge my legendary vampiric charm up from somewhere and try not to embarrass myself. This has gone on long enough.’ 

‘That’s the spirit,’ Igorina said dryly, ‘now go and show her around the stalls, your moping is putting me off my stride.’ 

Squaring her shoulders and frantically trying to channel that time she had successfully squired a duchess round the pleasure gardens of Quirm, Mal advanced on Polly with what she hoped was a charming smile, ‘Polly,’ she said, ‘while your brother and Otto are occupied, would you care to look around the stalls with me? Some of them,’ she glanced over at the two vampires next to them who were constructing a large matchstick model of the Unseen University with single-minded focus,’ are pretty...specialist in their focus, but there should be something of interest somewhere.’ 

‘As long as I’m not taking you away from your own area of interest,’ Polly said, eyeing the flask of coffee in Mal’s hand. 

‘Oh no,’ Mal waved her hand dismissively. ‘I like to source the beans and drink the finished product, but the process by which one becomes the other is more Igor’s field than mine.’ 

‘I see,’ Polly said, and lapsed into a silence that Mal suspected would have been comfortable, had the bats in her stomach not been threatening to crawl up her throat. 

They passed the stall run by two vampires who had proved that it was possible, if perhaps not advisable to crochet anything. (Mal was particularly nonplussed by their attempts at making galoshes) Finally, they paused before a table presided over by a new and enthusiastic arrival from Uberwald with a mania for brass rubbings, and turned to look at the (to Mal’s untutored eye) indecipherable messes of graphite on paper. Mal occupied herself with rehearsing about five different ways of broaching the subject of some sort of invitation (she shied away from the word ‘date’) when she was forestalled when Polly, who was frowning like she was about to go into battle. 

‘So,’ Polly said, with a deceptively casual tone of voice, ‘would you be interested in going out for a drink or a meal sometime? I mean,’ she hastened to add, ‘just us, and preferably not in Jackrum’s Bar because I see enough of that place...’ 

‘I’m sorry, are you asking me out?’ Mal said, the speech she had been composing in her head entirely forgotten. 

Polly ran her hand through her hair distractedly and her face fell as the silence between them lengthened, ‘perhaps I assumed too much...’

‘No! No!’ Mal cried, lunging forward so rapidly that many of the Black Ribboners around her looked alarmed and pulled out their precautionary stakes. ‘I mean, I would like that very much, it’s just, that’s not the way I expected it to go.’ 

Polly sighed with relief and then smirked, ‘were you planning to swoop down on me in an alleyway on my way home then?’ 

“I wouldn’t dare,’ Mal grinned, ‘you’d shank me for sure. But,’ she continued, grasping at the tattered remains of her suavity, ‘if you were amenable, i could probably manage some pre-arranged swooping at a time that was convenient for you.’ 

Polly laughed, ‘yeah alright, give me a date for the swooping and i’ll put it in my diary.’ She leaned closer, smiling, and Mal was able to smell the faint scent of chamomile on her hair. 

‘You two,’ said the new vampire discruntledly, ‘aren’t interested in brass rubbings at all are you?’ 

 

***

Captain Carrot strolled down the banks of the Ankh, nodding genially to the people who ducked into alleys to get out of his way. It was a pleasant evening, the last of the sunlight highlighted the strange green and orange patterns on the surface of the water, formed by various unnameable seepages and overflows from the city, so that they looked almost pretty. He stopped to greet the seamstresses as they walked into the city centre and popped his head round the door of a few taverns to wish the suddenly rather subdued patrons a good evening. 

His smile widened further as he saw a couple come towards him, hand in hand. It was nice to see a bit of romance on his evening patrol that he didn’t have to issue a warning for indecent exposure for. He whistled happily and decided to turn a blind eye when the blonde girl grabbed hold of her companions collar and dragged her into an alleyway. His patrol was almost done, and then he’d go and find out what tavern Angua was patronising tonight and join her. 

‘Hmm,’ Mal said, affecting an air of faint puzzlement, ‘I’ll admit my experience of swooping only runs to a couple of centuries, but I’m sure it’s in the rules somewhere that I’m not supposed to be dragged into it.’

‘You were taking too damn long,’ Polly grumbled, ‘and us old soldiers are decisive types.’ She dragged her hand up through Mal’s hair and brought their faces close together, so that their noses were brushing. ‘I spent too much damn time hanging around that coffee shop of yours waiting for you to notice me as it was,’ she muttered. 

‘You did?’ Mal said, pleased, ‘oh I’m glad I wasn’t the only one... who wasn’t entirely self-possessed,’ she continued reluctantly. 

‘Oh yes?’ Polly grinned, ‘I’ll have to get more on the subject out of you later, but for now... ‘ She trailed off, pulling Mal down so that their lips met and her hair brushed against Mal’s cheeks. 

Mal sighed into it, inhaling the scent of coffee, boot polish and chamomile. The night was warm, Polly’s hands were firm about her waist and somewhere down the street Captain Carrot could be hear crying ‘12 o’clock, and all is well.’  
‘


End file.
